"AV" 2000-2009 Education Election Employment Athletics

AVERY e@ca.on.simcoe_county.nottawasaga.collingwood.the_connection 2003-08-08 published
category e is education election employment athleticsWILSON to be sentenced today
By Roberta
AVERY,
Special to the Connection, page 2
When Patty
WILSON looked up from her frenzied attack with two
butcher knives on her sleeping husband, to see their then-10-year-old
son watching from the bedroom doorway, she got up, closed the
door on the boy and then continued the attack, a court has heard.
"It was heinous crime on a child's father in the child's presence,"
said Crown attorney Kevin
SISK at
WILSON's sentencing hearing
in the Superior Court of Justice in Barrie last week.
WILSON, 34, pleaded guilty June 3 to aggravated assault causing
bodily harm in connection with the July 27, 2001 attack on her
husband Tom
WILSON, 40, at their Collingwood home.
Court heard that their only son, Thomas Roy, tried to call 911,
but the telephone line had been cut, so although it was 2 a.m.,
the boy ran into the street and pounded on neighbours' doors
until someone heard his cries for help.
When the paramedics arrived they found the boy cradling his severely
wounded father.
The boy's pajamas were soaked in his father's blood,
Tom WILSON, who suffered 12 deep stab wounds and numerous lacerations
in the attack, spent the next four weeks in hospital in Toronto.
Patty WILSON was found locked in the bathroom. She had taken
an overdose of pills and later lapsed into a coma.
She was initially charged with attempted murder, but pleaded
guilty to the lesser charge.
SISK told Justice Harry
KEENAN that the boy's actions likely
saved both his parent's lives.
Tom WILSON, who required more than 100 stitches, still suffers
pain and breathing problems from the stab wounds one of which
was so severe that his lung was left hanging out of his chest.
He has also lost much of the use of his left hand and has had
to learn to write with his other hand as he is left handed.
His diaphragm was torn loose likely by his wife jumping on him
during the attack, court heard.
In a victim-impact statement presented to the court, the boy,
now 12, stated that for a long time after the attack, he was
afraid to go back into his own home.
"A kid should always feel sale in his own house," stated the
boy, who also wrote about thinking about bad things happening
to normal people whenever he watches a movie.
His grandfather, Thomas
WILSONSr., told the court about the
terrible nightmares his son and grand_son suffered for months
after the attack.
"I spent night after night holding my grand_son as he tried to
handle the awful nightmares," said the grandfather.
SISK said there was no evidence that the attack was provoked
in any way, but he did accept the defence argument that Patty
WILSON was in a state of depression and anxiety at the time of
the attack.
Noting the Patty
WILSON has shown little remorse and calling
the attack one of the most grievous criminal acts" the court
could see short of murder,
SISK asked Justice
KEENAN to sentence
WILSON to seven years in prison.
That was in sharp contrast the Patty
WILSON's Lawyer Tim
BREEN,
who asked for a sentence of six to nine months.
His client suffered from sleep apnea, a condition that results
in the brain being starved of oxygen, and this could explain
in part her disassociation with the events of July 27, 2001 said
BREEN.
"She only had partial awareness of what she was doing... she
was someone in a confused state of mind because she was oxygen
deprived," said
BREEN
Patty WILSON, who suffered severe depression because of a life-long
battle with being over weight, found herself overwhelmed because
of her husband's critical comments and his controlling nature,
said BREEN.
Justice KEENAN was to sentence Patty
WILSON today.